Let's go back say 40 odd years. I'm from the UK.
Back then "media" largely consisted of three, soon to be four channels on your analogue TV and a lot of newspapers and magazines. The media was largely passive except for the letters pages, which mostly featured real people, and the likes of "Readers's Wives" which was mostly bollocks (quite literally).
If we look at the newspapers back then: they all had a clear and well known set of biases - political and otherwise.
The Times was Conservative, so was the Torygraph (Telegraph). The Grauniad (Guardian - yes, that one) was unable to employ editors capable of effective proof-reading. The Independent was not really independent and the Sun and Mirror published pictures of young ladies alongside their biting political satire. The Sunday Sport had even more piccies of scantily clad young ladies and was barking mad - "Elvis piloted Lancaster bomber found on Moon".
We also had and still have titles such as "Private Eye", who are generally acknowledged to be proper journo outlets.
The media has always had a bias and it was always accepted that you took multiple papers, and watched the BBC and ITN News, if you wanted to appear to have a balanced view and at least appear to be well informed. Note that we forked out dosh for those papers and the UK TV license fee is not trivial.
Back in the day, I didn't have a bunch of Russians trying to spin crap at my front door, pretending to be Jehovah's Witnesses or double glazing salesmen or my work colleague. They bought peerages and sat in the House of Lords or footie teams, but at least they were mostly at a distance! Nowadays the buggers are trying to hack my telly.